Indian housing scheme in Trincomalee ignores uprooted Champoor Tamils

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 August 2014, 14:08 GMT]The occupying Sri Lankan military in Trincomalee has blocked the representatives of uprooted Eezham Tamils from Champoor from presenting their appeal in person to the Indian High Commissioner Yashvardhan Kumar Sinha, who visited Moothoor East last Friday to lay the foundation stone for the housing scheme for the war affected people from the three villages of Koonith-theevu, Navaratnapuram and Choodaik-kudaa. The uprooted Tamils, still living in four so-called welfare camps at Paddith-thidal, Ma’nat-cheanai, Ki’liveddi and Kaddai-pa’richchaan, who were blocked from the handing over their appeal have sent a letter to the Indian High Commissioner detailing their suffering for the past 9 years.

The 825 families from Champoor East and Champoor West GS divisions have been completely neglected by the occupying Sri Lankan State.

“You would have noticed out lands in abandoned state on your way to Koonith-theevu. Our lands have been seized from us under the pretext of building a coal power plant. But, there is no connection between the seized lands and the coal power plant. In fact, our lands have been seized for the purpose of transforming our ancient village into a Sri Lankan Navy cantonment. Please exert pressure on the Sri Lankan Government to release our village back to us with our houses, temples and schools. Also be kind to allocate houses for us under the Indian Housing Scheme,” the letter states.

The inauguration of the project comes two years after it was initially announced.

1,000 houses were to be constructed for the war affected people in Trincomalee district according to the initial announcement. But, this number has been increased to 1,500, informed sources said.

In the meantime, the beneficiaries of the houses complain that the allocation of money for each house was at 550,000 rupees when the scheme was initially announced. Now the prices for the construction material have gone up and a proper housing would be difficult to achieve under the previous allocation, they say.